"26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. 27 What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matt 10:26-28)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

From Anathema to Glory

Dear Father, The Words which You have spoken are Life and Truth. You sustain all things by Your powerful Word. You graciously put Your Word in the mouths of Your prophets. Oh, Lord I cannot speak Your Truth on my own. I would distort Your Wisdom. I would bring judgment upon myself apart from Your circumcising work. I commit these Words to You. You have revealed these things to me and know I know that you will protect me, Your daughter, from erring. The life of Your people and the souls of Your chosen ones are wrapped up in the bundle of You, the risen and living God and Savior. Your love. Oh Lord, YOUR love.In Jesus Christ's Name, Amen

The last few weeks, God reveals certain very specific concepts to write to you about. They are not from my own mind or based on my own experiences. Some of these concepts have nothing to do with anything I have experienced or thought about. I assume absolutely no authority over men. I stand under the head of Christ (and my parents) and share with you these things as Your daughter and sister. Some of you may not agree with certain aspects. I know that God is using the hatred of men to conform me to the image of Christ. He wants me to learn to fear Him alone. You can still talk to me in person (please do!) as I am a normal human person finding refuge in Him. Here is proof: link. And many of you have encouraged me since the last letter and I thank you for this.

The Two Paths

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7

Only a few among the churches of America have found this small gate. We must not take salvation in Christ for granted! Many of us who think that we are saved have not known the true Gospel. Even the truest followers of Christ are called to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling" and to "examine themselves to see if they are in the faith". Do not fear this examination but come before Him in fear and trembling. His desire is not that we perish but that we come to repentance. That is the reason why God had me write the following sections: He wants all of His Sheep to, through His Spirit, know the Truth that sets them free and find great assurance in their standing before Him in Christ.

The Curse

From the beginning of time, God had created mankind in His own Image for His glory that we may find joy, peace, and comfort in His unfailing love. But man choose to reject God: He sought to exalt and please Himself rather than God. He lusted after what pleased his flesh. He boasted in the things which he owned and the work that his hands had done. He wanted to be like God, knowing both good and evil. He refused to dwell in the state of innocence and freedom walking within the bounds of the law of God which bring life as they are obeyed.

Because of the wickedness of his heart, God has bound man over to the evil desires of his heart. We are born into sin from the moment we are conceived. Selfishness is the air that we breath. Pride is at the root of our every word. Bitterness creeps in the crevice of every bone. Violence is under our feet and in the palm of our hands. The way of peace we did not know. Ruin and misery marked our ways. We were consumed with guilt and immoral longings. Ambition and earthly passion filled our hearts to the brim. Our wickedness permeated our way of life. We worked with the sweat of our brow, worked to earn what can never satisfy. We feared the oppression of mortal men who themselves could not save themselves from death. We hated those who were made in God's image and who were meant to be loved by us. We dug our own graves in our rebellion. We ignored Him moment after moment, day after day. We put His Words and His ways out of our sight. We rushed on in our own plans, thinking we could reach the heavens by our towers that our hands have built. Our conversation consisted of slander and cursing, godlessness, fearlessness of God, disrespect, confusion...we spoke with greed and envy, malice, and strife. We oppressed the needy and refused to give to those in poverty. We sought to please ourselves, to amuse ourselves, to fill ourselves, to give our bodies thrill and to gorge them in sinful gluttony. We sought our own honor and sought to disparage others who were a threat to us. WE HATED OUR VERY BROTHERS WHO WERE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. IN OUR OWN HEARTS EACH OF US EXALTED OURSELVES ABOVE THE THRONE OF GOD.

Therefore a curse consumed us. We were slaves to our own selfishness and bodies. Left to ourselves, our conversations consisted of godlessness, our deeds sowed seeds that brought forth death and ruin. There was none who did good, no not even one. No one understood the ways of God. His law was severely broken and our consciences ruined.

The result of this curse was death, a complete separation from God from birth. We were born hating God. Each of us, no matter how noble we appeared to the sons of men, we were slaves to our hatred of God. We refused to acknowledge and give glory to God, but wanted the glory for ourselves.

We lives our days in guilt and fear. There was no peace we had in anything that we did. We sought to consume ourselves in pleasure. We stood in the shadows of death while feigning the dawn by our earthly pleasures. We tried to have an appearance of Godliness, but to no avail. We deceived many men in our hypocrisy, but before the Father we stood condemned.

The One and only true God, the Eternal One, the Ancient of Days is holy and sinless. He cannot bear the Presence of sin. His fire is consuming men and angels in their wickedness. In an instant His judgments prevail over the laws and lives of nature. He is the very essence of love. He is Love. Indeed Agape is this King's Name. He is good. He cannot deceive or speak falsehood. Peace and victory are under His crown. Faithfulness and love are His breastplate. His belt is Truth. His eyes are blazing fire. His eyes pierce through the hardest hearts. Everything is bare before Him who is full of righteousness, judgment, and wisdom. He will never condemn the innocent. HE WILL NEVER PARDON THE GUILTY. HE WILL NOT LEAVE SIN UNATONED. His mercy and grace know no bounds.

In His great justice He had left all of the sin committed beforehand unpunished. With the outcry of our wickedness reaching heaven, there was only one thing left for us: to perish in separation from God. Behold the cup of God's wrath was in the Father's hand at the brink of being poured out on us. The cup of God's wrath contained His hatred against sin, the righteous judgment of the Holy God. Fire and brimstone, incomprehensible pain and anguish, tears and deep gloom, excruciating Spiritual distress...things that would make us gnash our teeth to even hear a glimpse of. In our rebellion and the hardness of our hearts, each and every one of us could not desire to come near Him or to even want to obey this Righteous King. Even in the fires of hell, in our torment, we could not love Him, we could not want Him, we could not seek His forgiveness....we were altogether WICKED AND HOPELESS. Our days were mortal, our bodies failing, our pain endless, and our work unfruitful.

If God if a Just Judge, He must condemn us. If God is love and a lover of His own perfect righteousness, He must hate sin. He cannot tolerate out wickedness. He could not tolerate our living existence. Our due sentence was death. OUR OVERDUE SENTENCE WAS DEATH.

We had blasphemed His Name, trampled this God, this Creator, under the soles of our feet. We had thrown His crown down and despised it. We showed no regard for this awesome righteous King.

BUT GOD IS LOVE! HE IS FULL OF MERCY! He did not despise the work of His hands. He did the one and only thing that could satisfy His justice as well as His merciful love. Surely, justice meant that the price for our wickedness was our blood. Without the shedding of blood there could be no forgiveness of sins. This God, this King, He humbled Himself to the lowest of low positions. He came down to earth as a man, bearing the disgrace and weakness of humanity in the flesh. He lived a perfect life, was tempted as we are tempted and to utmost degrees, and remained sinless as He used the Sword of His Father's Word.

As Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed that the cup would be removed from Him...no, not that the physical pain and humiliation of the cross would be removed from Him, but rather that the cup of the Father's wrath and hatred would be removed from Him. His righteousness and love of His Father were at the heart of this request. So much was His zeal for Union with the Father and for righteousness, that His sweat was drops of human blood, the very human blood that He had chosen to acquire in order to share in our humanity that He might relieve us from death.

There on the cross, the wrath of the Father, His cup of judgement was poured out on Him. He became the curse...the very curse that we had been under. All of the shame and guilt and fear and anguish that ought to have been our destiny, was placed on Him. BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD WHO TAKES AWAY OUR SINS, THE SINS OF THE WORLD.He was treated by His Father as a murderer, a liar, a thief, an adulterer, a homosexual, an angry, helpless, worthless, futile, self-centered, prideful, lustful, greedy, malicious, ungrateful, rebellious, disobedient, honor-seeking, jealous, unholy, slanderous, unjust, hypocritical, weak, miserable, powerless, debaucherous, immoral sinner. All of the condemnation for every man and woman, boy and girl, every person was combined and heaped upon this Man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief. Surely He has borne our griefs and sorrows, yet we did esteem Him not. He was despised and rejected by men.

There on the cross as He bore our sins, we mocked and ridiculed Him, we blasphemed His Name, we showed no regard for His love. There on the cross, His Father was pleased to crush Him. His Father put Him to death. He was delivered over to death for our sins.

HE WAS RAISED TO LIFE FOR OUR JUSTIFICATION! If He had remained dead, we would have still been in our sins because there would not be One who lives forever to intercede for us and to be our High Priest. Indeed death had no power over Him, and God His Father, the Father who crushed Him, also raised Him to life bringing glory to His Name and victory to His Cause and Kingdom. He calls men and women, young and women to come to His fountain and lay down our guilt and fear. Surely He has washed away our fears.

HE HAS REDEEMED US FROM THE CURSE that we may no longer serve the prince of the power of the air and our very own selves but rather the One who saved us and called us His own children. He calls us to come freely to the fountain to wash our sins away and where we may drink deeply in His river of delights and feast of His Words, the Bread of Life, His Body broken for us. Do we not all share in one Body?

We no longer live our days in guilt and fear, struggling to survive, struggling to thrive. We have become prisoners of the Lord Jesus Christ. Surely His love has captured our hearts. He is the song in our hearts, His Words and the Mind of Christ have consumed our thoughts, the ways of His love and our obedience to Him mark the ways of our feet. Nothing can shake our hearts, His love for us is so very great. THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO FEAR. There is nothing left to fear. Surely He has made perfect forever those who are being sanctified.

According to His mercy He has saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. We no longer live under the rules of the price of the power of the air: but rather we are servants of His Body, slaves of Christ. We have endeared Him to us forever. Nothing is disastrous compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Him. Nothing is glorious or pleasing except for the delights and eternal glories of our God.

BUT ARE WE NOT ALL LIVING AS THOUGH WE ARE STILL UNDER THE CURSE!?! We fear what they fear. We strive and struggle as they do. We slander and curse as they do. We are obsessed with fleshly pleasures as they do. WE MUST RETURN TO THE FOOT OF THE CROSS. HERE ALONE ARE OUR FEARS AND SIN WASHED AWAY. Everything will become clear my dear family, as you understand His eternal Gift.

The Spirit

God's very own Spirit is the one who awakens our spirits to see our sin. HE CONVICTS THE WORLD OF GUILT. He replaces our hard hearts of stone with hearts of flesh that love God and are sensitive to His calling Voice. Apart from this work of the Spirit, we could not believe in Him, not one of us. THE SPIRIT CONVICTS THE WORLD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. Jesus is no longer on earth in the flesh, yet the Spirit reveals the character of the Father. Surely all our righteousness and our righteous acts come from the Father. The Spirit shows us His way of peace and Truth. He is our seal guaranteeing what is to come and guiding us along this narrow path that leads to eternal Life. THE SPIRIT CONVICTS THE WORLD IN REGARD TO JUDGMENT.

The prince of this world stands condemned. If he were not condemned we would fear the consequences of the sin that he arouses in the hearts of wicked men. We would have had great need to fear sickness, physical death, poverty, the rejection of men, guilt, pain...that is, if the Father's righteous judgment had not crushed the head of the serpent, our fears would remain. BUT INDEED THE LORD HAS WON THE VICTORY IN JESUS CHRIST! He has overcome the world. Believing this with strong faith gives us the power to resist the fears of the world and the temptations of the flesh. The Spirit confirms to us our standing before God.

Earthly Needs and Longings Unfulfilled

It is often the case that we are wrought with earthly needs and desires. In one sense all of our expectations for these needs and longings to be fulfilled are sinful. They are sinful in the sense that our sins leave us so utterly undeserving of anything but hell. Some of these needs relate to the frailties of our humanity: hunger, thirst, shelter, clothing, health, companionship, marriage...and yet some of our longings are indulgent: lust, greed, self-attainment, self-honor, pleasure. One of our major causes for sin is that we attempt to meet these needs and satisfy our longings in our own sinful efforts and commit atrocities in the process. We steal, we accuse, we blame, we hate, we hide, we pursue, we deceive....

But God is calling us, my family, You, His dear child to come to Him with your longings no matter how immoral they are. Take them to Him and pour out your heart like wax in the prescence of the Lord. As you come to Him in faith, His Spirit will intercede for you with groans that words cannot express. As you live in His Spirit He will fill you with wisdom and understanding, and a deep persevering comfort. His Spirit will prevent you from gratifying the desires of the flesh. He will only let you suffer for so long. He provides many ways of escape. He knows you. He knows your passions. He knows the ways of your heart and the thoughts of your mind. AND HE PROMISES TO DELIVER YOU FROM ALL EVIL WHEN YOU TRUST IN HIM.

He asks you, "How long will you harbor wicked evil thoughts? Wash the wickedness away from you. Wash yourselves in the cleansing Word of Mine and the Blood of My Son". His love is so very great. All He wants is for you to know Him that He may be glorified. HIS DESIRE FOR YOU IS THAT YOU KNOW HIM for herein lies eternal Life. He will be glorified as He reveals His deliverance to You.

A primary example is Abraham and Sarah: desperate for an heir to prolong their family. Their own attempts involving Haggar and Ishmael with futile and bore great consequences to the world. But when Abraham went to God with this plea after God had promised him that he will become a great nation and have many descendants "How can this be for I do not have an heir?" God answered Him speedily with the coming of Issac. God was making the way for Christ to come into the world as well as satisfying the longings of Abraham and restoring fertility to the previously-barren Sarah in her old age.

Another example is King David. His immoral longing for pleasures of the flesh led him to commite murder and adultery with Bethsheba. God replied through the prophet Nathan with these words: "‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? " God loved David so much and was willing to give David much more. David should have taken His immoral longing to God. What happens when we take immoral longings to God is that God refines and purifies us. He opens our eyes to see that the delights of His Presence are so infinitely greater and more glorious than the carnal longing we had brought to Him. He is a good God. He knows that apart from the work of His Spirit we are so very blinded to everything about God and His Words and Ways.

Spiritual Gifts

The more you abide in the Spirit by reading, knowing, and taking to heart His Words, and by laboring in "aggressive prayer" by asking, seeking, and knocking, the Spirit will fill you with His giftings, whatever He has chosen to give you that you may be used to edify His Bride. A test will never reveal your Spiritual gift. The Spirit reveals to you your Spiritual gift and when He does, you will be very certain that it is from Him and what His purpose for this gift is in and through You is. We are called to be earnestly ambitious with Spiritual gifts because they edify the church, our family, His Body.

9 He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end. 10 Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand. Dan 12

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.19 I will show wonders in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ Acts 12

About Me

In the Scriptures the Shepherd’s eternal Covenant is a cutting out of His people from all that is devoted to destruction as they approach Him through His flesh and by His blood, a passing through of God’s presence among His people just as the smoking oven and flaming torch passed through the torn pieces of flesh that Abraham offered (Gen 15:12-16), the binding or marriage of two parties, that is, the reconciliation of Christ and His church, and the creation of a new kingdom and people, whose souls are perfected. We were dead in trespasses and sins, just as Abraham fell into a deep sleep and great terror and darkness came upon him, and God has established His Covenant by the strength of His own righteous arm (Eph 2:1, Gen 15:12).